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Location efficiency is why New York City is considered to be perhaps the “greenest” community in America—its wall-to-wall density and crowded subways and buses reduce its carbon-production “footprint,” per capita use of energy, and emissions. Manhattan’s population density—1.5 million people on a 23-square-mile island--is more than 800 times the nation’s density.  

“Rural areas are generally considered to be ‘greener’ than urban areas when it comes to climate change, when in fact the exact opposite is the case,” notes John Cleveland, a CNT director and vice president of the Innovation Network for Communities, in a review of climate change impacts on communities. “Urban environments are extremely energy efficient when compared to suburban and rural environments. For instance, while the average per capita production of carbon dioxide in the U.S. is 20 tons, the per capita production for New York City is 7 tons and for Chicago 12 tons. Based on these measures, urban environments are more than twice as ‘sustainable’ as suburban and rural environments. The primary reasons for this are dwelling proximity—dwelling units that share walls dramatically increase energy efficiency—and lower Vehicle Miles Traveled due to lower auto ownership, availability of public transit, and closer proximity of services."

The idea that there is efficiency in location is not new, explains Scott Bernstein, president of CNT and a national authority on the topic.  “But how to apply it is very recent.” In the early 1800s, he says, “it was understood that the quality of the built environment and its circulation—or mobility—system had value.  But there were no real tools for data analysis until the 20th century.” Studies beginning in the 1970s found that residents of high-density communities drove significantly fewer miles than those in low-density places. The advent of geographic information systems put powerful analyses behind claims that “smart growth” design of communities to increase density and access to mass transit would substantially reduce energy consumption and production of pollution.

As Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton explain in this chapter, innovators use location efficiency—the “mathematics” of human mobility and connectivity—as the basis for a range of community innovations. City and regional planners and private developers rethink the physical design of places, especially the efficiency of transportation systems and neighborhood designs. This has become particularly important as communities start to develop strategies to reduce their carbon footprint as part of broader efforts to mitigate or adapt to global climate change. Meanwhile, businesses and economic developers rethink the economic design of places, the development of economic comparative advantages, emergence of new markets, and the potential of local economic linkages.